Title: Beautiful Creatures
Authors: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Narrator: Kevin T. Collins
Source: Purchased from Audible
Publish date: December 1st 2009 by Little, Brown Young Readers
Buy it from: Amazon
Goodreads summary:
There were no surprises in Gatlin County.
We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
There was a curse.
There was a girl.
And in the end, there was a grave.
Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.
Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.
In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.
Review:
As I opened the page to draft this post, I saw an article that referred to Beautiful Creatures as the “anti-Twilight” and dudebros, I HEARTILY disagree. Perhaps they mean the movie and only the movie. Because the movie is why I read the book in the first place because it looks AWESOME (and I still intend to see it).
But the “anti-Twilight?” Not so.
TRUE, there are no vampires. True, the main point of view is a teenage male. And true, it has a storyline of it’s own that does not follow the path of Twilight. But it still has a hell of a lot of the (by now overdone– though to be fair, maybe they weren’t when this was published) paranormal romance elements. Which is fine if you’re into that, but it’s not really my cup of tea these days.
Also, OH MY CHRIST, Beautiful Creatures is so. Damn. Long. I’ve seen publishing industry people complain that a book is “as long as it needs to be,” but I truly, truly don’t think that’s true in this case. It seems like we rehashed so much of the same material through a back and forth with the relationship of Ethan and Lena and how the entire county of Gatlin hates Lena and UGH I was so tired of it.
What was done really well was extremely well-drawn scenes. They were vivid with details that pulled me into them. I was there. Also, Stohl and Garcia have an amazing cast of supporting characters– their personalities were all so interesting. If I’m honest (and I think you know I am), I think I cared more about them than Ethan and Lena, though.
Edited to add: Also, I lost count of the action moments where Ethan used a variation of the phrase “But I couldn’t move.” BB BOY, SEE A DOCTOR.
Audio:
Ok, so I mentioned, this is a long-ass book, especially on audio– 17 1/2 hours. Reading it physically would have been way faster.
Shout-out first to the narration. Kevin T. Collins is an EXCELLENT narrator, with a wide range of voices that employed for each character so that I could easily tell who was “speaking.”
HOWEVER, for some reason they decided to add a crap load of sound effects to the audio, which was HIGHLY dustracting and irritating. I mean I get adding music for songs that are only in the book. But when you tell me there’s a knock on the door and then have THE SOUND OF KNOCKING, it’s a little bit of overkill. Likewise, I didn’t need “weather” sounds like wind and rain. For me, it distracted me from the story itself.
Also, there was the issue of Ethan’s dream sequences on audio. Maybe you people who have read the book can tell me… are they actually described? Because at certain points he seemed to be dreaming and there were looooong stretches of SOUNDS… but no words. Like it sounds all tinkly, sometimes creepy music and wind and I was like ‘wtf’ until he woke up and resumed the story.
Infuriating.
To sum up: Beautiful Creatures is long and lengthy and is filled with tons of the typical hallmarks of paranormal romance, so I guess it depends if you’re into that kind of thing. But despite solid narration, the sheer length and the editing style mean I don’t recommend the audio route.
